by Roland Green
"No, and the masons would not stay to work in the face it danger." He hesitated. "I would not ask them, either. They have families for whose sakes they must remain at peace with our enemies."
Wylum clapped Gerik on the shoulder so hard that he nearly choked on his ale. "Well said, and even more, well thought before you spoke," she said. "You needn't tell the masons that yet, of course."
Gerik didn't see where the "of course" came from, but Wylum was going on with the report he had interrupted by pouring the ale.
"No more 'ghost-riders,' by what my people say." Her tone made it plain that any of her people who saw riders with their faces painted grayish-white and did not report it would regret it, and possibly more.
"Somebody chased Pel Orvot's flock of geese all along the bank and killed a few," Wylum added. "But we don't know if that was enemies, common thieves, or children pranking."
Suddenly she was silent, listening, head cocked to one side. She mouthed "keep talking" at Gerik, then slipped off her boots. Three long-legged strides took her to the door. With one hand she jerked it open, with the other she jerked the listener outside into the chamber.
It was Gerik's sister Rubina.
She was well grown for a girl of not yet twelve, and would probably be taller than her sister Eskaia when she reached womanhood. Right now, however, she was as helpless as a kitten in Bertsa Wylum's grip. Wylum might be past forty, but she had come to the manor from a sergeancy under Floria Desbarres, and had fought in more campaigns than Gerik had years.
"How long were you listening?" Gerik asked his sister, to keep Wylum from erupting like a geyser.
"Awhile," Rubina said. She met her brother's eyes glower for glower. "I must have made a noise when I heard the part about the geese. It was other children, friends of Milnoran's. Pel Orvot caught him poaching on the fish pond and threw a stone at him. It hit and cut his forehead. Milnoran's, I mean."
"I doubt that Pel Orvot could throw a stone in a circle like the plains riders," Wylum said, obviously holding in laughter. "I also doubt that you should be spying on your brother's meetings with me."
"If he isn't bedding you, and you're just talking about war, why shouldn't I know?" Rubina said.
This time Gerik had the rare pleasure of actually seeing Bertsa Wylum lose her self-command. She laughed until she had to put her head in her hands to keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks.
By then, Rubina was addressing her brother. "I don't know about doing the spying myself, but I know about Pel Orvot's geese because I listen to the other children. They listen to their friends. Everything said to one child spreads all over the manor in a day or two."
Gerik frowned, "So you'd use your friends as spies without their knowing it?" he asked sternly.
"That's the best way. A spy who doesn't know that she's a spy can't tell anybody anything if she's caught."
"You know that could—you could lose friends, that way," Gerik said. Rubina was so longheaded in so many ways that it was sometimes hard to remember she was not yet a woman. All three children of Tirabot Manor had grown up with friends ranging from the swineherd's daughter to the steward's five nephews. Rubina was now offering to throw all this away.
"You are offering this, to help defend the manor?" Wylum said.
"Of course. I haven't quarreled with anybody. Yet," Rubina added. "It's never a really honorable thing to do. So I wouldn't do it unless it was going to be life or death for us. I thought you would know how matters stand, and what is honorable when they are at their worst." This last sentence took in both Gerik and the guard captain.
"May the gods spare us the need for you to sacrifice friendships on the altar of necessity," Wylum said. Gerik had been trying to put a similar thought into words, but realized that he had been hopelessly outmatched in eloquence. He merely nodded, then rose and gave Rubina a brotherly hug.
"Thank you for offering," he said. "Meanwhile, don't be listening at my door again. People might see you, then think you knew secrets. Our enemies would—"
"Try to carry me off and torture me for the secrets?" Rubina said. "If you gave me that dagger Mother won't let me have, I could be sure they wouldn't learn anything."
Gerik knew that Rubina was in dead earnest, and swore to strangle Bertsa Wylum if she so much as smiled. Instead the guard captain reached down into her boot and pulled out a dwarf-bladed dagger with leather bindings on the hilt that had a Kagonesti flavor.
"Try this one for its fit in your hand," she said, handing the dagger hilt-first to Rubina. "A friend of mine about your size left it to me, after she died."
"In battle?" Rubina asked.
"Yes. And if you're so curious about battles, I'll tell you a few tales. But only if you practice with this dagger for ten days. Your oath on it?"
Rubina swore by a number of gods, including some that Gerik did not approve of her knowing about. Then she departed, with more ceremony but no less speed than at her entrance.
"Warrior blood runs true," Wylum muttered. Gerik pretended not to have heard her.
"Is there anything else today, good sir?" the woman asked. It was a title that they had adopted for Gerik because she refused to use his given name and he refused to be called "lord."
"No." Gerik looked at the water clock in the corner of his chamber. That and the shadows on the floor told him twilight was near. "I am dining with Lady—with our guest Ellysta tonight, in her chamber," he said.
Something suspiciously like a cough escaped Wylum. "At her invitation?"
"At her invitation. Brought by Serafina and Shumeen," he added, remembering his father's words about being completely honest with his captains.
This time Wylum laughed. "Has Serafina ever—? No, I won't ask. You would be honor-bound not to tell."
If the question was what Gerik thought it was, the answer would have been "no." The wife of his father's old comrade was not yet thirty, and a very handsome woman. But she had never cast any encouraging looks his way and he would have been honor-bound not to even acknowledge them if she had, let alone talk about it afterward.
Besides, he was not such an innocent in the matter of women as Bertsa Wylum seemed to think. But if he tried to persuade her of that, they would be arguing over the ale until well past the time that Ellysta expected him in her chamber!
It had to be getting dark outside, Horimpsot Elderdrake thought. He'd been crouched here in the rafters by the chimney more than long enough for that.
Not long enough to hear what he wanted to hear, though.
None of these bumbling, drunken fools would say a word about being ghost-riders, or hiring them, or knowing who they were or who hired them! None of them!
Oh, they talked all around the ghost-riding, and one of them said something about children who could be frightened into telling tales by haunting their elders' farms. That made Elderdrake say things that would have singed the man's beard down to the jawbone if the kender had been a wizard. He tried to put the man's face firmly into his mind, but it kept getting confused with five or six other men with stubbly brown beards, red faces, and bald spots on their heads.
He’d begun to have the feeling that kender had as much trouble telling humans apart as humans did with kender.
He also began to feel a bit more warmth along his back and at the seat of his breeches than was comfortable. Warmth that hadn't been there just a little while back, and they hadn't built up the fire enough to make that much of a difference—
"Yeeoooohhhh!"
Elderdrake screeched in surprise and pain. Sparks flying through gaps in the ancient chimney had set fire to the thatch of the roof, the straw in the loft, and his own coat and breeches!
He swung on the rafters until he thumped back and his bullocks hit hard against the underside of the roof. That look care of the fire on Elderdrake's clothes.
It also served to spread it to dry, hitherto untouched thatch, and to draw the gaze of every man below who hadn't already looked up when the kender's screech tore at the
ir ears.
Fortunately for both sides, no one had a bow within easy reach. Archery within the old farmhouse would probably have ended the life of both Elderdrake and several of the men. Everybody instead drew knives or scrambled for longer blades in scabbards hung comfortably well aside by men with serious drinking to do.
While the men were scrambling, Horimpsot Elderdrake was running.
He ran out the open door, turned hard to the left in case arrows, spears, or throwing knives were following him out the door, then remembered something he'd forgotten. To the left was a steep slope, dropping to the edge of the forest.
He tried to stay on his feet, but failed miserably. A smoking ball, he tumbled down the slope, bouncing off saplings and crashing through bushes in a way that would have broken the bones of almost any being save a kender or a dwarf. It was a good thing that he'd put out the fire on his clothes in the house, or he might have left a trail of burning sparks enough to start a fire even in the damp late-winter woods.
A squat, dark shape sprawled ahead: a stone hut that he remembered seeing on his way toward the house. Now he saw that it had a light roof of twigs and strips of canvas, and he was going to hit that roof.
He struck like a hailstone, crashing through the roof. Twigs and sod, strips of canvas and dead leaves rained down on him as if the whole forest had been upended, then flung down like a chamberpot from a high window.
Elderdrake rolled as he landed, which kept him from breaking any bones. He went on rolling, across patches of mud and through a puddle of rainwater, until he struck something hard, knocking all the breath out of himself.
What he'd struck was a small keg. It fell over and in its turn rolled, striking the wall hard enough to break open. Something grayish-white spattered everything inside the hut, including Elderdrake.
He lay still for a moment, knowing he ought to get up and run again, but also knowing that his legs wouldn't carry him more than a few steps unless he first won his breath back.
The pursuit Elderdrake had feared did not come. Probably the men were too busy keeping their house from burning down to worry about chasing kender, After a while, he was able to sit up.
As he did, he saw that the puddle had settled, until he could see a face in it. It took a moment before he could recognize it as his own face—the kender ears were the big clue—and then he wanted to shout all over again. This time it would have been a shout of joy.
His face was all patches and smears of the same revolting gray-white that the ghostriders wore on their faces and hands. He looked as though some particularly gruesome fungus was eating away at his skin, and he smelled like a mixture of rancid weasel fat and aged pine tar.
He looked around for something in which to carry a sample of the ghost paint back to Tirabot Manor. After a moment, he decided to settle for what was on his skin—which was beginning to itch—and a barrel stave dripping with the muck. He couldn't even think of tasting it without his stomach twitching.
But if he could get a sample back to the manor, Serafina could study it. She was a better herbalist than most, which meant that she could learn what had gone into somebody else's medicine as well as making up her own. Although if she ever made up anything as foul as this, Elderdrake wasn't going to touch it, even if she said it was an elixir of immortality!
Shouts up the hill reminded Elderdrake that he had better be on his way, even if the forest was close. He scrambled up the wall, flung himself through the hole in the roof, and dropped to the ground.
"There he goes!" someone shrieked.
Several more someones had found bows. Elderdrake heard the twang of bowstrings and the whistle of arrows. Then he heard a series of blistering oaths, which stopped the archery as abruptly as if the archers had all been strangled with their own bowstrings.
Kender curiosity made Elderdrake halt and look back, not even waiting for a convenient tree. A small round figure sat on a small horse or perhaps a large pony. It held a staff out at arm's length, one end on the ground, the other sloping toward Elderdrake.
The kender ran. As fast as he ran, the fire bursting from the head of the staff would have overtaken him if it had been aimed properly. Instead, it seared through the base of a fir tree, second growth but stout and tall for all that. The tree wavered, swayed, then toppled.
It fell directly atop the hut. Whatever energies had gone into the spell, they multiplied the impact of the tree tenfold. The hut disintegrated. It also burst into flames.
No, it erupted into flames. The spell had multiplied tenfold the heat in the ghost paint and everything else in the hut. A fireball as tall as the tree had been sprouted where the hut had stood, like a hideous, eye-searing mushroom.
And the sound!
Once, on his first journey, Elderdrake had found himself hiding in a ceremonial drum during a particularly long ceremony. He did not care to remember the details even now, and had told them only to his old friend Imsaffor Whistletrot. But he had been deaf for a week after his hours in the drum.
This eruption of flame gave the loudest sound that he had heard since he was in that drum. It also sent out a wave of air like a charging herd of oxen, to fling him head over heels again. He landed rolling, but missed hitting any trees before a thornbush stopped him.
This time Horimpsot Elderdrake ignored the fact that he was breathless, that his clothes were in ruins, and that he had aches in his legs, his head, his stomach, and other places that respectable kender were delicate about mentioning. He lurched to his feet, put his left foot in front of his right root, and kept on doing this, faster and faster, until he was running.
Behind him he thought he heard a few faint shouts, or perhaps screams, over the crackle of the flames.
Gildas Aurhinius stood arm in arm with Lady Eskaia on the Drapers' Quay in Vuinlod. The sea breeze made the torches burning all along it flicker, but their yellowish light let even Aurhinius's dimming vision see clearly what lay before him.
The heavy trader Long Sulla was tied up at the quay, and from her upper deck a broad gangplank angled down. To either side of the gangplank, sailors were hoisting nets full of stores and ship's gear.
Four abreast, the foot soldiers of Vuinlod were marching aboard. Or at least they were moving in that direction; Aurhinius found it hard to describe their progress as a march. Even allowing for their being heavily laden, he thought they could have done a little more to keep in step, for the good reputation of their town if nothing else.
Those heavy loads, however, were good arms and sound armor, and he had seen that the Vuinlodders knew how to use them. Also, the fighting this campaign might see was not likely to require keeping fine formations or shifting from one to another at a run. It was most likely to be work aboard ship or from boats, and he trusted the Vuinlodders more in that kind of fighting than he would have trusted most of the Istarans he had led in his last campaign as a leader in the Mighty City's host.
"They may look like a mob, but I will be proud to lead them into battle," he said.
He felt his wife flinch. There, he thought. I did not have to think twice before calling her my wife. In a year or so, I will not think of her otherwise. Old dogs can learn new tricks, if they have a good teacher, and Eskaia is the best. Look at her children.
"I did not mean that I was going to put myself at their head every day or even in every fight," Aurhinius went on. "I am too old and fat to be a hero when one is not needed.
"Of course," he added, "being old and fat also means that I cannot run away So I will have to bring up the rear in a desperate retreat, and let the younger men live to fight another day."
This time Eskaia did not flinch. She merely nodded. "Very well," she said. "But I will lead the younger men back to find your body when the battle is done."
Aurhinius did not quite sigh. His wife seemed determined to sail on this quest.
"I could hope you would not be anywhere near the battlefield," he said.
"I could hope that this matter was settled," she replied. "I m
ust sail as far as Istar, at least."
"We are not going to Istar. Some who sail with us would not be safe that close to the city. Nor would the Istarans feel safe with some of us in their waters or even at their waterfront."
"I meant," she said, "as close as the fleet goes to Istar, which is Karthay."
"I believe you when you say that your father and his successors have friends in Karthay, from whom we may learn much, but what if you cannot go ashore?" he asked.
"Then I will send—no, I will ask—Haimya. She has kin in Karthay, and no one will doubt that she goes ashore to visit them."
"No one except those who know she is the lady of Sir Pirvan, Knight of the Rose, and guardian of as many secrets of the Solamnic Orders as he is. Would she thank you for allowing her to go into danger for no purpose?"
"She would not thank either of us for even hinting that she has become a hearthwife." Eskaia's grip on his arm tightened; he heard steel in her voice.
A man could laugh, if the stakes in this gamble were not so high. "I believe that if the roads were not spring mud, you would long since have taken to your litter, bound for Istar," Aurhinius said.
He felt rather than saw Eskaia smile. "I would have ridden," she said.
"Of course. I forget. Litters are for ladies, which you are not."
"Have I not proved it often enough, by word and deed?"
"To be sure, and I look forward to more of both," he sighed. "But, beloved, consider that you are the shield of Vuinlod."
"The shield?"
"Yes," he said. "The town and the people who have taken refuge here have more than enough enemies in the lands around them. As long as you are in Vuinlod, those who were your father's friends, and those who owe them friendship or money or favors—all of them will speak against moving on Vuinlod."
"It counts for something, I should think, that the town is across the border in Solamnia," Eskaia said.